


Sanity/sobriety

by bellmare



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga
Genre: Gen, Mythology - Freeform, gratuitous symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-03
Updated: 2013-05-03
Packaged: 2017-12-10 07:21:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/783350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellmare/pseuds/bellmare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Is he sane, he wonders, to be doing this. Is he sober enough, to think about the consequences of being a monster and having a demon in his head, a demon that will tear him apart and remake him in its image.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sanity/sobriety

He doesn't know why he's doing this. 

He doesn't know how his life has come to this; how he's been lectured on honour and morality by AIs, by simulations plucked from virtual realities and built for war who should've been operating on nothing more than logic algorithms programmed to respond in the only ways they knew: to fight and to kill, all as mindless automatons. He doesn't know his life has come to this, to have a program staring disdainfully at him, a man who is more monster and machine than human.

"You are the people of Nirvana?" Gale says coldly. Deep blue shadows shift across the planes of his face as he shifts in his seat; the glare from the screen glances across his cheekbones. His eyes gleam, chartreuse in the gloom. "Lupa died in vain."

_Lupa._  Roland turns the name over and over in his mind. Why does it make him feel ashamed.

"... keep Cielo safe," Gale is saying after he confers with his leader in a silent, fleeting exchange. Roland envies that; the fact that Serph has so much sway and command over his subordinates with such economy of speech and action. 

The door hisses shut behind them. "Frightful monsters, they say," Adil murmurs, staring after them. "What we did, it couldn't be helped. He'd have killed us all."

Roland can't bring himself to meet Fred's eyes.

.

So it has come to this. It has come to him arranging all his bottles of liquor before him, shotglasses fanned out on the table.

"You don't owe them anything," Adil tells him. "None of us do."

But that's where Adil is wrong; he may be a survivalist but Roland, Roland doesn't agree. Honour, he thinks, was a concept that died with the past. Honour doesn't buy a life, not in the Karma Society. There is no honour, not in this world the AIs call Nirvana. What kind of Nirvana is this, he wonders; was it really worth it, for them struggling to reach it?

"Karma is a funny thing," Roland says and picks up the first shotglass. He pours bourbon into it and swirls it around and tosses it back. The alcohol burns all the way down his throat. "The wheel of karma spins, eternally; it never truly stops. Karma, they say, is the sum of your deeds in life. Only once you have collected enough karma can you be reborn in the cycle of Samsara." That's what it said, in all those books he pored over when he was younger, when he still believed in a world the gods did not destroy. "If you have good karma, you are reborn into a better life; if it's bad, well. I'm sure I can leave that up to your imagination."

Adil laughs. He sounds tired, weary -- but aren't they all, in their war of attrition against the Karma Society. "I'm surprised you still believe in all that. And you think - you think turning yourself into a monster is an answer? You think it will help you to get good karma so you can curry favour from some nonexistent gods?"

Roland slams the glass back down. He feels it shatter; he feels the shards cutting into his palm. One down, many more to go. He'll be needing all the help he can get, to ease into what he's going to do.

He pours another shot and lifts the glass in a toast; he thinks of the one Gale called Lupa; he thinks about Greg, and watching him die as he runs away like a coward. Once a coward, always a coward, he thinks bitterly.

"I've wasted my life enough."

.

Is he sane, he wonders, to be doing this. Is he sober enough, to think about the consequences of being a monster and having a demon in his head, a demon that will tear him apart and remake him in its image. 

He wonders who he will get; he's read the files and the mythology, he knows who the others are. Varuna, Prithvi, Vayu. Dyaus. Agni, the missing one. It's ironic, he thinks, that amongst them comprises a third of the Dasa-dikpala, the guardians of the directions; it's ironic, that amongst them are three of the Mahabhuta, the very elements from which the world was created. It's ironic, Varuna is the guardian of the west amongst the Lokapala. Maybe it means what he thinks it means, that Serph is a better leader than he is. Than he ever will be. It's all true, anyway.

The syringe feels like a loaded gun in his hands. Honour, he tells himself, he's doing this for honour. He's doing this so he can meet Fred's reproachful stare, he's doing this because he owes it to Greg. 

His sleeve is still wet. The paint sticks to his skin. He knows what orange means -- illumination, renunciation of the outside world, divinity; transformation, danger and victory. Orange is close to red and red is war and bloodshed, and isn't it so apt, knowing where they come from?

He rolls his sleeve up. He chooses his left side, because god knows he needs steady enough hands to make sure the needle goes where it's supposed to. The left is passive; the left is receiving; the left is the unconscious. That's what it means, isn't it, that's what he's doing, he's receiving the boon of the atma virus, to have his unconscious set free.

He's too drunk for this, Roland decides, but he can't turn back. Not with a needle in the crook of his elbow, not with a demon virus in his blood.

The serum burns all the way through his veins, all the way to his heart. It feels like fire, it feels like being struck by lightning, it feels like he's dying from the inside out.

.

_Indra_. His name is Indra. Indra, leader of the devas and the lord of the Svargaloka; Indra, brother to Agni and son to Dyaus and Prithvi; Indra, Lokapala guardian of the east. 

(For once, he deserves his name; he deserves his title. Maybe.)

Indra, the slayer of Vritra; Indra, slain by Meganada.

He shivers.

The lightning ball atma glows faintly at the back of his hand. What have I done, he wants to know. What have I done.

.

He's insane, for turning himself into a monster. He'll never be sane again, with the hunger and the static hiss of the solar noise at the back of his mind. He'll never be sane again, with Indra howling in his head, with the crackle of electricity that skims over his skin, with the power humming through his livewire veins.

At least he'll be sober.


End file.
